1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus, and in particular, to an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus in which a region of interest is set for a heart.
2. Related Art
An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus transmits and receives ultrasound to and from a space including a target site (such as, for example, an organ, a cavity within an organ, and a tumor), obtains echo data, and forms an ultrasound image such as a tomographic image and a three-dimensional image based on the echo data. In general, in the ultrasound image, an image of sites other than the target site is included, and a technique is known in which a region of interest is set for the target site, in order to improve the diagnosis precision or the like.
For example, Patent Document 1 (JP 2004-24560 A) discloses a technique in which a region of interest which is constantly superior can be adaptively set following a change of the target tissue such as a heart. Patent Document 2 (JP 2005-334317 A) discloses a technique in which a three-dimensional region of interest is set for three-dimensional image data.
For example, when an area or a volume of a cavity in a heart (cardiac cavity) is to be measured, a suitable setting of the region of interest for the heart would lead to an improvement in the measurement precision. However, suitable setting of the region of interest is not necessarily easy. For example, when a user sets a three-dimensional region of interest in a three-dimensional ultrasound image which three-dimensionally shows the heart or the like, the labor and time for the setting may be problematic. In particular, when the user is to set the three-dimensional region of interest to follow the expansion and contraction movement of the heart, even more labor and time would be required.